Cracking the Code
by Kolibri Halliwell
Summary: A man experiences a cataclysmic system crash in his mind and thinks he's going crazy. Based on the story of The Matrix.
1. Part One The Warning

Part One - The Warning.  
  
Today was the day when I realized that I was crazy.  
  
I just wanted to get out of here, away from all of this. That's all I wanted to do.  
  
I was walking through the usual afternoon crowd when the insanity suddenly struck me like a bolt of lightning and I froze in my track. I wasn't able to move, I just stood there like a moron. People kept passing me by, brushing against my shoulders like I was some kind of rag doll, just standing there, in the middle of the big city.  
  
My gaze was locked to some invisible object right in front of me and every time I tried to move my feet or even make the slightest movement with my fingertips, I found myself unable to do it. It was taunting. I wanted to scream, to pull myself out of this cataclysmic system crash I was experiencing, but I couldn't.  
  
"I've finally done it," I thought. "I've cracked the code. I've passed through the portal. I've... finally gone mad."  
  
I don't know for how long I stood there. Maybe a couple of minutes or hours, I have no idea. My sense of time was completely lost to the great black void of unconsciousness I had fallen into.  
  
Then someone finally knocked me over and broke the spell. I fell down on my four, my hands and knees touching the muddy wet asphalt. I stared down and began to choke, feeling the sour liquid crawling up my throat. Seconds later my lunch was lying on the street in front of me and I was grasping for air.  
  
"Sir, are you okay?" said a boy who was passing by and gave me a concerned look, carefully avoiding stepping into my not very pleasant looking lunch. He helped me get up. The world was spinning around me.  
  
"Yes. Yes I'm just fine," I replied in a croaked voice, still clinging onto his sleeve. I let it go once I had found the balance for my feet again. "Thank you."  
  
The helpful teenager disappeared into the nameless crowd of suits. I wiped my mouth with a handkerchief and proceeded walking, like in a dream. I tried to look at the faces of the people passing me by, I looked at the buildings and the cars that drove by. It felt like I was saying goodbye to something because I didn't feel a part of it anymore.  
  
"Maybe this is a relevation everyone gets shortly before they die," I thought without the least bit of worry. My right hand slid into my pocket and I threw a few coins in the hat of a beggar who was resting against the wall of another nameless building.  
  
"Thank you kind sir, thank you," his lips formed an almost unbearable whisper as he looked into my eyes. I nodded, sudden pain shooting through my chest.  
  
More nameless faces, buildings, cars. The road home had never seemed this long before. While in the subway, graffiti caught my attention. By the time I saw it I was already too numb to think with logic and just let everything sip into my mind like disease. I repeated the line again and again as I was sitting on the train, staring out the window, watching the world flash by. "Reality doesn't exist my friend, I'm living like a pirate using my sixth sense."  
  
I just wanted to get out of here, away from all of this. That's all I wanted to do. I never expected to go crazy.  
  
With a sigh of relief, I threw the keys down on the table, on top of today's Wall Street Journal. I hung my jacket in the closet and began to undress in front of the mirror, beginning with the tie. A man with bright blue eyes, brown hair and distinguished face features stared back at me. There were almost no signs of the terrifying loss of sanity I had experienced today, none except for the paleness of my face and the first lines of rings under my eyes. It had been a long day.  
  
The face didn't lie. I had not slept much lately. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I was suffering from a serious case of insomnia, which nothing seemed to cure. I had tried it all - sleeping pills, alcohol, Enigma, TCM until the late hours of the evening. But no - something was keeping me awake, night after night.  
  
Was it my restless mind and the growing pile of problems and hurtful incidents that had happened to me lately? It very well might be.  
  
Maybe my unconscious was trying to tell me something? Perhaps even warn me?  
  
I didn't want to think it could have anything to do with the last dream I could remember having. The dream about the wires.  
  
I remember it very clearly, maybe because there was not much to remember. I remember several thick black wires spreading, growing, and reaching for something. Black liquid was dropping from them, black drops of liquid. My inner eye followed along their length and it saw them moving, like the tentacles of a squid. Darkness was everywhere around them. And then, suddenly, I was wrapped in among them and they were suffocating me. They wanted me. They called for me.  
  
The man in the mirror followed my every move as I touched the mirror with my fingertips. They slid against the cool surface.  
  
"Mad or not, this man needs a drink," my reflection said and I agreed with it.  
  
The distant sound of applause and cheers reached my ears.  
  
"Ladies and Gentlemen," a voice said once the noise had settled down. "Tonight is a very special night for us. This is the moment WE ALL have been waiting for and I know that the wait has been long to the point where it has become unbearable."  
  
Despite the words, there was a pause and the crowd whistled and cheered, as expected.  
  
The voice laughed. "Alright, I won't keep you waiting no more! The people of the world, may I present the one who managed to crack the code, the only one who has passed through the portal... Theeee... MADMAN!"  
  
The curtains parted and I wasn't the least bit surprised when I saw myself standing in the middle of the stage. As expected, the other me on the stage was completely unable to move. He stood there, frozen, and I saw horror and fear in his eyes. The crowd whistled angrily.  
  
Then it began.  
  
The other me slowly began to dissolve and the sight wasn't pretty. The face of my skin started to fall apart, break down, layer after layer, and I still stood there, frozen.  
  
Frozen.  
  
My lips began to form a word when they detached from the rest of my face and fell down to the ground, followed by layers of nose and cheeks. The crowd laughed as the process became quicker and thick strays of hair began to fill the scene and now my bones were beginning to show as one of my eyes popped out and rolled over across the scene into the audience. Applause and laughter filled the theatre as the horror scene was played out in front of them, the chanting only getting louder and louder.  
  
"Bravo, bravissimo! Encore, encore! ENCORE!!"  
  
The loud thud of my own bones breaking down and falling down to the floor filled my head as I opened my eyes and leaped back into reality.  
  
I would never sleep again.


	2. Part Two Remembering

Part Two - Remembering.

Death was coming for me. I knew it, I could feel it with all of my five senses, in every part of my body. I felt it every time I was awake and it came to me in my dreams as well, never leaving me alone. It could be the quiet ticking of a clock I didn't have. It could be the soft laughter of a child in my room or the voice of my dead wife whispering to me at night. It was everywhere and I couldn't hide from it.

Death was out to get the old Jake.

Next morning I called in sick and spent the entire day lying in my bed, drinking and sleeping, hoping that by doing this I would somehow kill my insanity. I felt very weak and I was freezing to death, but that didn't matter. I barely got through the day and when the night fell upon the city, I decided to take a walk in the park which was nearby. I had to take my mind of things and obviously killing my brain cells didn't erase the dreams or visions, so I had to try another approach to this problem.

I fucking had to dry drugs.

I had never sunk this low in my entire life. I had never tried drugs, not even once. I had watched people fade away under their influence, I had seen how they lost their entire lives and didn't even give a fuck. Drugs were dangerous things. So I had promised myself to never, ever, under any circumstances, try them.

Well, promises are made to be broken, aren't they? All I could think about was getting those visions out of my head and to never dream about the wires or seeing my own eye pop out of my head again. This was pure nightmare material and I figured that whatever drug addiction may do to me later, it couldn't be any worse than this. It felt like there was a hole in my head I couldn't fill. I figured that maybe drugs could help me on my way of doing that.

Just maybe. But it was worth a shot.

Besides, I couldn't get anymore insane, so what the heck.

The park was the perfect place to find a nice and decent drug dealer or, well, as decent as they could get. I had been approached by several a couple of times while I was peacefully sitting on a park bench and minding my own business. Now I just prayed and clung onto all of the luck I could possibly have at this miserable point of my life and returned to the same place, hoping that one of them would still be there.

Has anyone ever told you what an unpleasant place a park can be at night?

I sat down on the same bench and grabbed the old newspaper someone had left. Then I threw it away because I couldn't read it anyway. The weak light of a nearby lamp shone down upon me, barely showing my silhouette, not even talking about casting enough light to read a copy of an old and slightly wet newspaper.

The laughter of a drunk couple reached me from far away. After five minutes I began to feel restless. An old man passed me by, casting me a weary glance.

I pulled my hat farther over my eyes.

After fifteen minutes I started to shift places in the bench.

Three tall black shadows caught my attention after a half an hour when I was ready to get up. I got up and ran up to them, my heart pounding in my chest, I was so close to the solution, to the oblivion.

I waited until I got home before I injected the drug in my body. When the rush came, I let out a sigh of relief and slid down to the floor, closing my eyes. The sensation filled my brain, my body, my everything and I slipped away from my nightmares, my worries, my problems, into a world where nothing mattered and no one cared about it anyway.

Well at least the goddamn drug got my mind off the wires and the ticking of the clock. For a little while.

I opened my eyes and stared dully into the hallway. Everything was kind of a blur, but I remember thinking... "Oh, so that's the way it goes..."

My eyes felt much better when they were closed. I felt sleepy, even. I wasn't even aware at what point the images of the nightmares were beginning to flash me by. But it wasn't just that, they were more... Memories.

It was strange. Every time I tried to concentrate on those memories, something seemed to stop me and it hurt. My head hurt. It hurt so bad... like someone was gripping my head with a steel claw and pressing it tighter and tighter together. Even the drugs couldn't make the pain go away.

I buried my head in my hands and let out a groan as I began to remember, despite the pain. It was the most painful process of my life. First there were just random flashes, each running through my body like an electric shock and I heard someone screaming.

It had all started that day at work. It had been a very bad day. I had gone out to do a favor for the admin and when I returned, I was facing -

A massacre. 163 people had died in a mysterious attack which had ultimately led to the destruction of the entire building. And I was the only one who had survived.

More screams in the background. The claw pressed harder. The smell of burnt flesh hit my nostrils.

No, please don't do this. Not anymore. No more. Please. Please. Please.

"Wake up Jacob. Wake up. You have to wake up."

My eyes sprung open and I stared into a pair of gray eyes. A soft hand touched my cheek and I leaned into it, drowning into depths of soft silver shadows.

"I'm... wide awake," I managed to say in a strange and distant voice. Then my lights were turned out.

Those damn drugs.


	3. Part Three Escape

Part Three - Escape.

I woke up, lying in my bed with my clothes on. I didn't remember how I had gotten there, my mind seemed to be nothing more than a blank computer screen. And then it came back to me with a wave.

The drugs. I had taken the drugs.

I checked the watch and it was already early afternoon. There was no point in calling in sick now, I would have to explain it on Monday. I had to pull myself back together, I had to.

Or else I would die. I tried to remember something, anything from the point when I had injected the drugs. But I couldn't remember a thing. Only... only a feeling. The feeling of a soft touch against my skin.

My gaze slid slowly over the room and fell upon the opposite wall. Something was written on it with red lipstick.

"You are living like a pirate with your sixth sense. Be careful, it's a dangerous life."

I stared at it for a while and then fell back into the bed with a groan.

The annoying and common sound of the groceries passing through the counter in yet another Food Mart calmed me down. Everyone was busy and the store was filled with people. After all, it was Friday afternoon.

Food. I needed food to survive and pull myself back together. I had planned a nice and quiet evening at home, eating a lot of food, maybe renting a couple of movies and taking a long bath. So far nothing had been bothering me today and I was silently hoping that whatever rain cloud of insanity had come over me, it had passed now and there would be no more rain any time soon.

While I waited at the counter, I looked around and whistled the tune of a dead melody, already reaching for my wallet in my pocket. A cashier smiled at me from the other side of the room and I smiled back as well. She had a nice smile and radiant blue eyes. Her attention turned to the next customer, but shortly after I had paid for my groceries and a young girl had passed between me and the other counter, I felt her eyes upon me again and I turned around to...

A man was sitting in her chair and he was looking straight across the store, at me. A suit with black sunglasses and a wire plugged into his ear.

A wire.

A subconscious works in very interesting ways. You can experience a great tragedy in your life or a very unpleasant incident and you simply forget about it the day after, like it has been wiped out of your system, another deleted file. Sometimes a tiny, irrelevant thing can trigger deep and strong emotions within you for seemingly no particular reason. Sometimes you can control it and sometimes your subconscious overpowers you and you simply follow the instincts that have kept your race alive for millions of years without giving it a thought.

That's what I did at that very exact moment, I followed my instincts. I turned around and broke into a run. I don't know the reason. Maybe it was the sudden surprise of seeing this strange man instead of the cashier. Maybe it was the wire that was plugged into his ear.

Or maybe it was just pure instinct that tried to keep me alive because now I know that if I would have stayed in that store for another nanosecond, I would have died right there in an instant and no one would've even noticed.

Whatever the reason was, maybe this was the very moment when I truly started to live my life as a pirate, allowing my sixth sense to guide me. I didn't know what kind of wheel I had set into run or how big that wheel was. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out.

But I had to keep myself alive. It is the instinct of every living being and I wasn't an exception.

Out through the glass doors, through the crowds of countless, nameless people. Into the streets of the big city, people shouting and screaming behind me as I ran through it all, feeling the cold breath of the northern wind blowing in my neck. I tried not to look where I was running because I knew that one moment of hesitation could cost me my life.

My sixth sense had never been as alive before as it was right then. I felt him, everywhere and all around me. Several bullets whizzed past my head and once I felt his cold long fingers grabbing after me...

... but they found nothing but empty air.

I felt myself being dragged into a dreamlike escape from someone I didn't even know. I heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle but I didn't bother to look up until the noise was too loud to ignore. A huge black Shadow Spirit was cruising right against me, its rider hidden behind a black helmet. My instincts told me to keep on running and it was not like I had much of a choice - I felt the man almost literally stepping on my feet by now. I knew I would not escape from him, I knew I was lost.

I also knew that if I would look back now, I would panic. But I had nothing to lose, nothing to care for anymore, I just wanted to look at the hunter's face for one last time.

The black sunglasses reflected my eyes, huge and filled with fear. I screamed, tripped and fell down to the ground, thus completely eliminating any chances of survival. The man was right behind me and the bike was just about to run me over.

Thousands of thoughts raced through my mind as I saw that bike coming straight toward me and I remember one of them being... "Hey, this is not a bad way to go. I get to die like an actionhero." You can't even imagine my surprise when the bike moved a couple of feet to the left a few of meters away from me and the rider reached out his hand. The next thing I knew was that I was sitting right behind him on the bike.

"Hold on," said a woman's voice and I did what she told me to, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind.

The Spirit roared and made a huge leap over the suit, landing elegantly back on the asphalt. I looked behind to see the man behind us reaching for something within his jacket and it was a gun.

I didn't have to tell the rider to go faster. We were riding faster than the wind as I felt the bullets whistling past my ears. The streets were nothing more than a changing, blurry view of blinking neon and crowds of people. And we rode through it all, deeper into the dark night as we disappeared out of the view.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against the rider's back, afraid that I would faint or fall asleep. I didn't even try to understand what had just happened. But I knew one thing.

I was still alive.


	4. Part Four Reflection of Yourself

Part Four - Reflection of Yourself.

I had no idea where we were when the Spirit finally stopped with a halt. I didn't recognize the place, but then again, there was not much to recognize.

It was a wasteland. There was no telling where we exactly were because we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Everywhere I looked, all I saw was plain land and bushes. The sky was dark and cloudy and the moon was hiding from our view. I stepped down from the motorcycle and walked away a couple of feet, uncertainly looking at my rescuer. She was wearing a pair of black leather pants, a long sleeved shirt and a long black coat.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"A couple of miles away from the city. It will take them some time to track us here since there's barely anyone around."

"Who are they?"

"Agents," came a short reply.

Who was she? And who was the guy who tried to kill me? And what was going on?

Questions raced through my mind, queries that didn't seem to get further than my throat because I couldn't get them over my lips. I watched her remove her helmet, revealing a sea of brown, curly hair. I was staring into a pair of gray eyes.

"You," I whispered and stood in the middle of nowhere, frozen to the ground. "You... You..."

"Me," she said calmly and placed her helmet on the Shadow Spirit. "My name is Raven." Her gray eyes flashed mysteriously and she smiled. "At least, that's what they have called me ever since I woke up." She started to walk toward me and I began taking an equal amount of steps backwards. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Jacob."

"Oh really?" I said, my voice shaking. "I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I'm not sure about anything anymore. I think I'm insane."

"No, you aren't," she said with a more intolerant tone and stopped. "Look, Jake, I can give you your answers, but before that, I need you to trust me." She paused and then added: "Please."

I hesitated.

"You have nowhere to go," Raven said quietly, looking into my eyes. "You have no family, no friends. Your job is in huge jeopardy right now and you've just escaped from an Agent. Now listen to me, I saved your sorry ass and I think that for that I at least deserve a moment of your attention."

I sighed and slid my gaze over the wasteland. I had to focus. I had to realize that I had absolutely zero control over this situation. If she wanted to kill me, I couldn't stop her. I had to cooperate, at least for now. I looked back at her sharply and said one word.

"Okay."

She gave me a winning, but tired smile. The smile had somehow felt like a rutine she had to do every now and then.

She returned to her motorcycle and sat down.

I followed her. She reached for something inside of one of her pockets; it was a pack of cigarettes. She put one in her mouth and lit the tip with the lighter. Soft smoke filled the cool night air as she breathed in the nicotine and then looked at me.

"Cigarette?" she offered and I took one. I had stopped smoking a long time ago, but I figured that this was one of those situations when anyone had the right to fall back into some of their bad habits. And damn it felt good.

She wasn't saying anything.

After a couple of blows, I finally felt that I could manage a decent conversation. I stared into the nothingness.

"Now tell me... who are you, really?" I asked.

She grinned and put out her cigarette with the heel of her black combat boot. "I'm just another pirate, Jake. And I'm here to set you free."

"Set me free, huh?" I said, breathing in another dose of nicotine. "And how have you planned on doing that? Maybe by creating another hole in my head, like the guy back there was trying to?"

She laughed and shook her head. "No, but I like your ironic sense of humor."

"Why thank you, it's my specialty. So how have you exactly planned to set me free then?"

She lowered her head for a moment and then turned to look straight at me. "Jake, I know you haven't been the same since the tragedy. I know you've been feeling extremely strange lately."

"That's to say the least," I snorted and put out my cigarette, not even bothering to ask her how she knew about these things about me and the catastrophic incident at the company I once had been working at. "I thought I was going crazy."

"What is exactly that you are feeling? Can you describe it?" she whispered, looking into my eyes as she cocked her head.

It felt weird. I felt like I was having a psychology session in the middle of the freakin' nowhere and it felt very odd. But what the heck, I had nothing to lose.

"Well," I began with a sigh. "Since.. since the tragedy, I feel like I've been walking in some kind of dream. Everything seems very unreal. A couple of days ago I just froze in the middle of a street and I couldn't move. That's when I started to think that I might be going crazy. I've also had dreams. Strange dreams."

"What are those dreams about?"

"Sometimes they are about wires. That's what forced me into a run when I saw the man in the shop, I saw the wire he had plugged into his ear and I remembered my dreams. And I started to run."

Raven nodded. "Your dreams saved your life. The man you saw is an Agent. They are very dangerous."

"Why?" I asked.

Her look became piercing and serious. "Jake, this is a very crucial point of the road. The steady road you've walked is now dividing into two and you must choose which one you will follow."

I looked at her silently, not saying anything. I felt the silence creeping down over us, over the night and the universe. My heart was beating the rhythm of an African drum, I felt every word she said with my entire essence. I felt she was right. Something was going to happen to me. Something big.

"Go on," I said quietly.

"What you said, about walking in a dream, is more true than you know Jake," Raven said and her silver gray eyes seemed to fill my world. "What will happen to you, if it will happen, will be very dangerous for a man of your age."

"Hey, I'm not an old man," I protested immediately.

"I'm not saying you are. But you must be very perceptive and open-minded to what you will find out."

"I can do that," I said with an undertone of stubborness in my voice.

"No one knows if they can handle it or not until they stand face to face against the truth," Raven said. "The truth will change your world, your entire existence. It will change everything you know, everything you think you are. Are you sure you can handle that?"

I swallowed, staring into her eyes. I wasn't sure about anything. But I was not the kind of guy who was ready to admit that.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Why are you helping me?"

"I have my reasons," Raven smiled. "Reasons which you will be able to find out about, unless you can't handle the truth."

That sounded like a challenge to me. Does it sound like a challenge to you?

"Well," I said and stood up, towering over her. "Let's find out. I have nothing to lose, now do I?"

A sign of recognition was seen in her deep eyes. Her lips curved into a smile and she nodded. "All right. I was expecting nothing less."

Sudden ringing filled the night air. Raven reached for a cellphone in her pocket. She took the call and listened to something for about ten seconds.

"We're on our way," she said shortly and ended the conversation, putting the phone back into her coat. She removed her coat and threw it down on the ground. "Get some sleep now. We have a long journey ahead of us. And trust me," she added with a grin. "It's going to be one hell of a ride."


	5. Part Five Suicide

Part Five - Suicide

You know when you come to the point in your life when you suddenly start to think... What the hell am I doing here? Does anyone care that I even exist? Would anyone really miss me if I decided to blow my head off with a gun one sunny morning?

That kind of stuff. You know what I'm talking about. No?

Well in that case I guess I'm just plain nuts.

These thoughts began circle in my head a long time ago before any of this happened. I started to think in these lines after I had lost my wife to the deadly hands of cancer. She had been a good woman. I don't know if what we had ever met the requirements for love, but I know that I cared for her deeply and her disappearance made my life utterly miserable.

So I started to fight it off like a man and bury myself in work. Work work work.

Work.

Except that it didn't help.

And after the explosion...

Well, my only desire was to get a gun and shoot my fucking brains out. There wasn't much more to it. Of course, I tried to hide from myself but the truth was that I simply became suicidal. I fell into a deep depressive pattern and sometimes I even suffered from short-term memory loss, at least that's what I thought then. Sometimes I just simply got to a place without remembering how I had gotten there. I knew I was going crazy and what I actually felt was relief.

Because crazy people are much better off than the normal ones. They don't bother with stupid things like morality or feel any guilt. They are free. So I knew that if I became crazy, it would be the best thing to ever happen to me.

Yes, I could blow my head off without blinking once. And deep inside I knew it. And this was most likely the reason that allowed me to follow Raven on that black Shadow Spirit. Because I had nothing to lose.

And if something would happen, I could always kill myself.

Instead of turning around and driving back into the city, she took me to a little suburb area nearby. When I asked her where we were going, she replied to me that the city was now too dangerous and we had to take an alternative exit.

"An exit from what?" I screamed as the wind was blowing in my open mouth. The Shadow Spirit was soaring through the highway in the middle of the night.

She answered me something, but the wind carried her words away from me. The highway was beginning to fill with cars as we approached the little suburb area. I was really beginning to feel tired. It was perhaps 2 or 3 am and I had experienced more excitement than I could ever have wished for. I had almost dozed off, resting my head against Raven's back as the bike suddenly stopped with a halt and I opened my eyes.

To our right there was nothing more than a swamp and a couple of apple trees. Perhaps the place had once been a garden. To our left there was an old house that looked like it would fall apart any minute now. The paint had disappeared from the wood a long time ago and the windows were sealed with planks. There was a sign on the door.

"WARNING. By entering this area you are putting yourself in mortal peril."

"Well ain't that the damn truth," Raven muttered to herself and approached the house after she had parked the Spirit. I followed her reluctantly, trying not to show how tired I was. "So what are we going to do here?" I stifled a yawn and stretched out my numb limbs.

Raven looked back at me, her eyes hidden behind her reflecting sunglasses. "Someone I want you to meet is waiting for us in there."

I stared back at her. "Really. In there?" I nodded toward the house. The darkness behind the sealed windows watched me.

Raven didn't answer. Instead she walked up at the door and opened it as carefully as possible. It creaked like a dozen of untuned violins. I shivered at the sound, but followed her as she stepped into the darkness beyond.

At that moment my brain just stopped working for a moment. I was still moving, I was still walking right behind her, I was looking at the dusty furniture of this ghostlike house, the ancient chairs and tables and the chandelier that was blinking merrily like a Christmas decoration

But time stopped for me. My consciousness seemed to curl up in a shadowed corner in a dark room, sobbing and wondering what the hell I was up to. It was trying to escape from the dark masses of my unconsciousness that were starting to rule in my mind, mercilessly killing every conscious bit that stood in its way.

Without hardly being aware of it (or being able to be aware of my awareness), I had followed Raven up to the second floor and was now entering one of the bedrooms. The bed was covered in layers of dust and so was everything else. Except for the chair.

Because someone was sitting in it.

A man with sunglasses and a wire plugged in his ear who was pointing a gun at my head.

Something was terribly wrong, I wanted to say, there had to be some kind of mistake-

He pulled the trigger in a cool manner and blew my head off in an instant. My blood was covering the walls, slowly sipping down to the floor.

My consciousness woke up with a startled scream and I stared at the clear night sky above my head. The stars had already lit over the black velvet dome and were blinking down at me peacefully.

I blinked back and took a deep, trembling breath, sweat running down my face. She was looking at me.

"You screamed," she said and watched me carefully, holding a gun loosely in her hand as she was leaning against a stone. She lit another cigarette.

"I had a nightmare again," I replied and suddenly became aware of the chill in the biting night air. I wished I had dressed warmer, but then again I had never thought I would be spending the night in the cold wasteland in the middle of nowhere with a mysterious woman who called herself Raven.

"What was it about?" she asked, still watching me as the smoke swirled around her face. "Wires again?"

"Agents," I said and lied back down on the improvised sheet that was made out of her coat. She obviously didn't feel the cold or had any need for sleep. "The people you called Agents. It was very real. I thought... it really happened," I continued, not quite being able to explain what I had felt, but this was as good as I could get.

"Maybe it did," she answered and put out the cigarette. "Go back to sleep now."

She was talking to deaf ears. I had already fallen asleep. I tossed and turned around for the remaining hours of the night, whispering to myself in my sleep as the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon.

"Go back. Go back. Please go back."


	6. Part Six Truth or Consequence

Part Six - Truth or Consequence.

When her bike stopped next to that same old house, I thought I would die right there. I felt like someone had dragged me into a nightmare which I was unable to wake up from. And to think that a few days ago I was still having something remotely like a normal life.

Raven looked at the house and grinned. "Well ain't that the damn truth," she muttered and began approaching it.

My mouth was dry and I just stood there without being able to move for the second time this week. She turned around and looked at me with a most likely curious expression behind those reflecting sunglasses of her.

"Are you coming?" She said. There was a tone of cold irony in her voice.

Of course I was coming, where else would I go? I was trapped in a repeating nightmare. Of course I would follow her into the house, up the stairs and get my fucking brains shot out by a dude in a suit. I had no control over the situation. I never had.

Could I even trust her?

I broke out of my coma and time started to move again. I started to walk right behind her, my eyes fixed on the black void of the house that sipped through the broken windows.

Suddenly I didn't seem to have my everlasting death wish. It seemed to have disappeared somewhere between my afternoon grocery shopping and the roaring of the black Shadow Spirit. I didn't want to die anymore. I wanted to live.

I wanted to know the truth.

"Stop," I exclaimed suddenly. Raven froze and turned around. My pale face was reflecting in her glasses.

"What is it?" she said impatiently. "We're in a hurry. We have to get out of here before the agents pinpoint our location. If you're having your moment of doubt right now, this is really not the appropriate moment."

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I struggled with the words, trying to get them off my tongue.

"It's about my dream," I finally managed to say, the relief waving over me. "I think it was real. I dreamed about this place. An agent is already waiting for us inside. It's a trick. This place is not safe."

Her eyes flashed behind her sunglasses as she looked at me and hesitated for a moment. She turned around and looked back up at the house, her mouth forming a thin and straight line.

"Are you sure it was this place?" she said quietly. I nodded behind her, only then realizing that she couldn't see what I was doing.

"Yes," I added, surprised at how confident my voice sounded. After all, I only had a very vague idea about what was going on here. But my sixth sense was guiding me. "It was exactly this place. Trust me."

"Trust you..." Raven whispered and turned her head to look at me. The she nodded. "All right. We won't go in there. But this also means that we won't be able to use the exit and the closest one is back in New York."

"Which means?"

"We'll have to stay here for a little while. Maybe not exactly here... But here."

"That's not a problem for me. After all we're having such a good time," I said with a weak tone of sarcasm. We turned around and walked back to the bike when I heard the door open, just like in my dream, like a dozen of untuned violins.

I didn't have to look back to know that at least one suit was standing in the door opening. But Raven did.

That was her mistake.

The next thing I know is that I was running faster than I ever had in my entire life. It was that instinct, that sixth sense again, that had forced me to run from the agents back in the city. But now I didn't have a mysterious woman on a bike who would come and save me when I would fall down.

I just had to do it on my own. Which meant that I couldn't fall. It was unacceptable.

I didn't care about what was real or not anymore. What was truth or fiction, nightmares or reality. It was all the same to me. All of a sudden the entire world had collapsed and everything had mixed together in one big bowl of soup.

I ran through the old streets. It was early morning and only few people were outside. I knocked over a newspaper boy and I heard him cuss behind me. The next thing I heard was a gunshot.

I felt their cold breath on my neck. Two old ladies were coming against me and the next moment they were agents too. I didn't think, I simply changed my direction and ran into an alley. Now they were at least five who chased me.

I ran and yet I knew that I had to stop soon. My heart was pounding heavily in my chest in a rhythm I had never thought would be my own. I looked straight ahead of me.

I stopped and burst into laughter.

I was staring into a solid brick wall.

It didn't matter that I hadn't seen it when I had chosen this alley. It didn't matter that I was completely positive that this alley hadn't been a dead end. Oh no.

All that mattered now was the gun I had in the coat I was wearing. Raven's coat. I heard five pair of feet running quickly in my direction, their shadows showing on the walls.

I turned around and leaned my head against the wall, reaching for the gun in my pocket. My sweaty fingers slipped around it and I was scared that I would drop it when I pulled it out. I didn't.

They were five. All of them were pointing their guns at me as they walked in my direction, their eyes hidden behind their sunglasses. Reflections of me everywhere, staring back at me, asking me what I was going to do now.

And if I was stupid enough to do it.

"Drop the gun, Mr. Clemens. It's over," one of them said and stepped forward, his gun pointing straight at my head. Just like in my dream. Would my blood cover these walls in a couple of seconds?

I wanted to live.

"No, it's not," I said and brought the gun up to my temple. I felt its cold steel against my skin and swallowed as I kept my eyes fixed on one of the agents.

For years I had thought that it was better to be dead than alive.

Now I thought otherwise.

"Drop the guns or I'll shoot my own brains out," I said calmly. My reflection raised an eyebrow. So did the agent.

Slowly, the guns were lowered and put back in their holsters.

I lived.


	7. Part Seven Nightmares

Part Seven – Nightmares.

Darkness. Covering me, covering the world, covering the Universe. There was nothing but the darkness and the cold breath of eternity.

It was that dream again. The dream about the wires. But this time it didn't end like it always did. This time I could follow the extensions of the wires as they went higher and higher into the deep darkness, without a beginning and without an end… It was like the world had been turned upside down and the gates of hell were located in the sky instead of the dark depths of the earth.

And then I saw the light.

I didn't know where I was. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know my name, I didn't know what my profession was, if I had a wife, if I had ever had any children, where I lived, who my parents were, if I had any friends… It was all a big black hole and the feeling of immense emptiness filled me, sucked me dry until I was nothing but an empty shell of a man, without a soul, without hopes and dreams, without a life, without meaning and without a goal.

And then I heard them say my name and I somehow just knew that they were responsible for this, they were responsible for the way I felt and what I had become, they had created this emptiness and this darkness that enshrouded me. And I suddenly realized that what I felt was pain, pain beyond my wildest imagination, pain that not only completely destroyed me physically, but that was also slowly breaking into my brain and eating me whole from within, cell by cell, memory by memory.

"Jacob," they said and I wasn't aware of the tears streaming down my face, my splitting headache or the fact that I was hanging upside down in chains. I was aware of anything else but the emptiness that was consuming me but their voices still bore their way through the endless layers of pain until they caught my attention and I was forced to listen, I had no choice.

"Jacob," they repeated and I tried to open my eyes and look at them, see these people that were doing this to me, but all I could see was shadows, shadows moving all around me. I screamed when I suddenly fell down into something soft and that was suddenly clinging to my body. My trembling fingertips slid over the material and I realized that I was lying in a heap of blankets and they were clinging to my body because it was covered in blood.

I was bleeding heavily.

I groaned, ignorant to the voices above me, the sounds of footsteps and chains.

I tried to remember something, anything that would confirm me of who I was and why this was happening to me.

All that came to me through my pounding headache were these words: "Reality doesn't exist my friend, I'm living like a pirate using my sixth sense."

I heard them repeating my name again and I opened my mouth and spoke before I spat out what seemed to be blood mixed with teeth.

"Reality doesn't exist," I said, my voice blurry, distant and strange. "Reality doesn't exist," I repeated as I struggled to get up from the sticky blankets, trying to see. "Reality doesn't exist!" I screamed when I felt hands that grabbed hold of me and I couldn't feel the sharp sting of the syringe because my body was completely numb with pain and then there wasn't any pain at all.

I was floating above clouds. I felt the complete opposite of my previous state. I felt like I had never seen or thought this clear before. I tried to think of who I am and the facts were gathered quickly and placed neatly in text that made perfect sense.

My name was Jacob Clemens, I was 43 years old and I was working at MTI as a computer software programmer. I was a widower because my wife Marie had died from braincancer eleven years ago and I had never been in a relationship with another woman since that day. I was also the only survival of a horrible explosion that occurred two years ago at my previous job. There was something that had always bothered me since that day, ever since that tragic day when I returned from my errand and saw the flaming ruins of the building and the sirens of approaching policecars and firemen. I had recently had very peculiar nightmares and daydreams about wires.

"There is also a woman involved. She calls herself Raven and she owns a black Shadow Spirit motorbike and she saved me from a man who wanted to kill me, I don't know for what reason."

I suddenly stopped talking when I realized that I was saying these things out loud and not in my head as I had thought. I opened my eyes and tried to see. This time my sight didn't fail me. My face was reflecting in a very familiar pair of black glasses.

Agents. Raven had called them Agents.

The thin lips of the man suddenly turned into a small smile that somehow seemed comforting.

"There, there now Jacob," said the man. "Calm down. You've done very good, although there are a few things I need to correct in your story."

I was tied to the chair with the same chains they had hung me down from the roof with. My hands were held behind the chair with a pair of handcuffs. I was also naked and I suddenly became extremely aware of that. I looked down at my body and I could see no signs of the torture they had put me through, no scars and no blood.

"We didn't torture you," said the man who was sitting right across the table that was inbetween me and him. The room was narrow and with just enough place for the table, the two chairs, a large mirror on one of the walls and a huge fan that was rotating behind the Agent's head.

"It was all in your mind," the man whispered.

I looked at him, afraid of the frightened pair of eyes that reflected in his glasses, knowing that those eyes were mine.

"You tried to kill me," I said.

"No, Jacob, you're wrong," the man replied calmly. There was something by the unchanging tone of his voice that made me shiver. "We didn't try to kill you. We were just using you to get to… Raven, is that what you called her? Raven."

My eyes widened and I suddenly heard the shot in front of the old house behind my back once again as I had set off into the run through the streets. "You shot her," I said and while I expected my voice to be filled with the anger and rage I felt inside, it was nothing but a mere whimper. I had never felt so alone and so confused in my entire life. Everything seemed to be lost now, even though I didn't know anything at all. "You killed her! Bastards!"

"Calm down now Jacob," said the man behind the desk and kept looking at me. I forced myself to take calmer breaths and stared back at him angrily.

"Remove your glasses so I can see your face, murderer," I snarled, my entire body shaking with rage as I thought about the pair of grey eyes that had looked back into mine and the hand that had grabbed me and taken me on a journey through the night.

The man sighed and removed his sunglasses to my surprise, revealing a pair of blue eyes and sharp, distinct nose. He put the glasses in one of the pockets of his suit, turning his head and allowing me to see a short glimpse of the white wire plugged into his ear.

"How is that your attitude is so hostile towards us Jacob?" The man asked as he looked at me again and I could feel the eyes piercing through my flesh and into my brain. The voice was still just as calm and strangely soothing. "You didn't know this woman anymore than you know me. How can you be so certain that her intentions towards you were good when she didn't even give you any explanations about what was happening or where she was taking you? How can you be so sure that the house she was leading you to wasn't a trap and that she was going to kill you?"

The words "Because I know that you were waiting for me" almost slipped off my tongue but I managed to hold them back. Something inside of me stopped me from telling him about the vision I had had the night before. I decided to keep it to myself.

I breathed heavily and looked away. I knew that this man was trying to brainwash me and make me doubt myself and the purpose of everything that had happened to me over these past few days. I wasn't going to let him talk me over with his soothing voice and reasonable arguments.

"Even if you are right," I said as I gathered my strength and looked back at him. "Then you're no better than she was."

The man smiled and was just about to say something when his right eye twitched and he brought a hand to his ear, the one that had that white wire plugged in it. It looked like he had received some important information because he shot a sharp look at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. He got up and left the room through a small narrow door that was closed right behind him. The door was opened again shortly afterwards, it was another Agent, looking very similar to that one I had just talked to. He simply walked up to me, tilted my head and injested another dosage of the drugs they had been feeding me with into my neck.

Then he left the room and locked it.

And to think that just a few days ago I had taken drugs to escape from my visions.

I was all alone again with the shadows and the nightmares. I stared at the huge fan that now seemed to fill the entire room, watching its rotations, relieved by the breeze of cool air it directed towards my skin. I lost my sight and any sense of time. I thought about Raven.

I don't know how much time passed before I heard voices and gunfire outside the room. I heard how someone slammed in the door, a rush of footsteps and how someone hurried towards me. I heard the jingle of keys and the next thing I knew was that my hands were free. Someone removed the chains that were tying me to the chair. I took a deep breath and remained silent, waiting for whatever was going to happen next. The shadows were still crawling around me, blocking my consciousness.

I felt someone taking a hold of my head and checking my eyes. The same person pulled me out of the chair and made me stand up. A pair of hands placed a coat over my naked body and I automatically wrapped it around myself.

Raven?

I saw the blurry image of a man with long black hair and dark eyes.

"You're going to be just fine," he said to me. Then he turned to look at someone I couldn't see. "You'll have to carry him. We have to get out of here before they understand what's going on."

He looked back at me again. "He's going to faint any moment now," he said and I knew that he was right.

Darkness fell upon me. I felt strong hands that caught me in my fall. Then I knew nothing more.


	8. Part Eight Reality Doesn't Exist

Part Eight – Reality Doesn't Exist

_Flash._

I was standing next to my wife's hospital bed as she was taking her final breaths. She had taken hold of my hand, her nails digging painfully into my skin as her body twitched in convulsions. She was crying and pleading to someone invisible to me, looking right past my shoulder. As she exhaled her last, dying breath, I could see into the depths of her soul and I saw nothing but agony and shadows.

Her hand fell down on the bed. I could hear the door behind my closing, but I didn't really registrate the sound and I never thought about it again. Nor did I remember the sudden flash of my wife's body slowly dessolving and falling into pieces, revealing that she had no bone structure.

The smoke from the ruins was rising high up in the sky, a black cloud that stood out against the bright blue sky. Sirens howled everywhere around me as I stood in front of the remains of the building I used to work at, the bag containing my lunch still tightly clutched in my hands. Everyone had died. Everyone.

Except for me.

"This is not happening," I whispered, facing the horrendous view of reality. "This is not happening. This can't be real. Can't be."

Everything made more sense than ever. I knew that these things couldn't just be coincidences. It seemed absolutely obvious to me that some malicious and powerful force was out to get me. To kill me in the worst possible way. To take away my life.

I ignored the voice of reason, threw my lunch in the nearest trashcan and walked away. I didn't step out of my appartment for days. I didn't let anyone in, not even the police that wanted to talk to me, or the press, or the distant relatives that had suddenly grown a new-found attachment to me. I slept a lot. I seemed to lose myself in my sleep, dreaming about the strangest things that I cannot recall even at this point. I ate occasionally. And I thought I wrote a journal, although later I discovered that the pages were all blank and the journal had never been used.

I waited for it to end. For all of it to go away.

Surprisingly enough, eventually it did. I woke up one morning and I knew that things were going to get better from no one. I took a shower, shaved, made some breakfast and walked outside, prepared to meet a batallion of disgusting, screaming creatures.

The hallway was empty. The cleaning lady, who was walking by, greeted me with a cheerful smile and wondered when I was going to let her into my appartment and allow her to clean up the mess she could see from where she was standing. I stared at her and she continued chattering about my untidy clothes and remarking on the razor scar I had accidently given myself this morning during shaving. I ran outside, feeling her gaze burning in my back, and I found the world in perfect order. There was the usual morning traffic, the people passing by on their way to work, the delivery boys greeting each other, the caféterias filled with the bohemians, the businessmen manipulating each other in their mighty glass buildings and the couples strolling through the parks, making the world a bit more beautiful, a bit more brighter with their glow.

I walked over to the place where the building I worked at was already being replaced with a new, even mightier one. It wasn't difficult to contact my superiors and have them transfer me to another location. On my way home, I bought new clothes and strolled through the supermarket, observing everything and everyone. They all looked so normal. And I looked just like them, which meant that I was normal too. I had to be.

I never returned to my appartment. I sold it and lived in a hotel while I searched for a new place to live in. I was going to change everything to something new. The appartment I chose was smaller, but in a better location with a very high-tech security system. It made me feel good, although I'm not sure why. It didn't take long to get rid of what was left of my new life and replace it with a new, better one. The images almost seemed to have been erased from my head, for I never remembered them again.

Until now. Until a mysterious woman came along and took me for the ride of my life. Until my flash began dissolving into pieces, revealing that I had no bone structure.

Something was calling me back from the dark depths of my subconscious, preventing me from wandering further into the tangled paths of my past. The light compelled me to open my eyes and shield myself from it by closing them again. I saw nothing but it. It burned through my eyelids, only increasing in strength. I tried to raise my hands in front of my face and found them bound. I tried to move my legs and realised that they were tied as well. I screamed in the face of my nightmares.

"Now that's not the way you want it, do you?"

The voice sounded so familiar, but I had no time to think about that. I felt as if I was on fire.

"No!" I screamed. At least I could scream. That I was thankful for, considering that I couldn't do anything else. "No that's not the bloody way I want it." The light was brighter than a thousand suns.

"What do you want then, Mr. Clemens?" The voice spoke. "Freedom? Truth? Escape? What will it be, Jacob?"

"I don't know!" I screamed in agony until my throat hurt. "I just want my life back! You hear me? I don't care about your freedom, about your truth! I don't want it! I just want-"

The light disappeared abruptly, leaving me in the dark with its warmth still upon me, the smell of burnt flesh filling my nostrils. I opened my eyes and I saw nothing. I closed my eyes and I saw nothing.

I knew someone was standing right beside me. I could hear the subtle sound of their calm and controlled breathing, yet when I opened my eyes, the figure still eluded me. Always just out of my grasp, hidden in the shadows of my mind. My subconscious was now a crawling beast, eating me alive with its black void.

"Who are you?" I whispered. "What do you want from me?"

"All I want," the voice said, "is to give you what you want and need."

I contemplated this for a moment in the darkness. "Oh," I finally said. "Well that sounds good enough to me."

A flash of color. A pair of grey, glowing eyes, hidden in the darkness.

"You," I said.

"Go to sleep, Jacob," the voice whispered and I felt the cool touch of her palm on my forehead. "Go to sleep. And when you will wake up, everything will be… perfect."

The End


End file.
